When developers sweep mistakes under the rug and cover up gaps in understanding with jargon and obfuscation, we reinforce the wall of imposter syndrome. Let's be inclusive and share what this journey is really like, warts and all.
Stuff I think is reasonable to not understand:
📌 higher-order functions, threads, closure, execution context, recursion, OOP vs Functional programming, a million acronyms everyone seemed to be throwing around
Stuff I probably should have known:
📌 Using an IDE, the difference between front-end and back-end, Node debugging and Chrome dev tools basics, using debugger instead of console.log, what is pure JS syntax and what is framework,
Stuff I'm not sure is "beginner" or not:
📌 this and prototype, merge conflict resolution, [reading [documentation]], the call stack, web API
I'm really curious what your thoughts are on this, and what your own lists will look like!
MTFBY
Top comments (17)
When I started, there was more gap than substance. Now, I find myself hiring. So my list for junior developers:
That's it. I mean, sure, I'm not a university lecturer, if you don't know how to at least build & run code in the IDE that you're choosing (since we don't tell everyone to use the same)... I won't be hiring you.
Everything else, is nice fluff.
Money where my mouth is, I've just hired a guy that's still finishing university. No checks with his tutors, no conditions on his contract, just a 1 hour-ish Skype call and a regular job offer with junior salary.
Re your list of "not sures":
this&prototype- who cares if a junior doesn't know it, or has a personal preference on when to includethisfor example.Dave, thank you! This is exactly the kind of conversation I was hoping to spark. I really like your two item list of requirements. I suppose my list is a bit overly specific, and what's most important is more soft skill related than knowledge or memorization.
No worries - if it's helpful for you or anyone else reading this.... this is my list of requirements for Seniors:
For everything that isn't a soft skill - there are many search engines at our finger tips. Hell, search engines work for soft skills learning too.
Oh, and with regards to seniority level - we have one job title - "Developer." Best way to level the playing field is by not starting people on different labels.
Debugging large applications was a mind blowing experience. I got my start working at a small company whose flagship product was (at the time) running on .Net Framework 3.??( it was 3 dot something, don't remember the minor version). The interview to get the position was basically a few different tests and interviews to make sure I understood XML, SCSS, JavaScript (ES5), and C#. Once I got started at this position, I was completely blown away by the size of the application. Debugging this thing was intimidating to say the least. I think it would have helped me out to have been exposed to some large applications before starting.
Yeah dude I hear you there! A file more than 100 lines scared the crap out of me at the beginning. What do you think could be a practical way for newbies to get exposed to large applications at the get-go? I know open source is always a good plan, but it is also massively intimidating to try and break into
Mikel, you're totally right about an open source project being intimidating! I do believe there are small open source projects out there geared towards beginners, but they may be hard to find. A year or so ago, I ran a small open source project that was a small Brewery Finder site built with React and Bootstrap. The entire goal of the project was for beginners to be able to get their feet wet with going through the steps of working on a project (clone, debug, make a PR, etc). I'm not aware of a place where projects like these are compiled and shared, but would be cool if that did exist.
That's awesome!! Thanks for sharing!
One thing I learned on the job/internship that my bootcamp did not accurately teach us was to navigate ceremonies.
My first(and so far only) gig was in an agile team that had sprints that were two weeks long as well as fortnightly releases. With those two week sprints;
They threw us in the deep end and expected the interns to just dive into Agile methodologies and ceremonies like we knew what we were doing.
I'm not sure if this knowledge was more our burden of responsibility, our bootcamp's, or that the company had higher expectations when they hired us. But either way it felt like being in front of a class naked nearly everyday.
Oh man that's a great point I didn't even think about!! Agile is almost religious for some people, and it's a badge of experience to know as many obscure acronyms as possible. Especially if you're an agile SCRUM master pivoting to hit OKR's with synergistic energies. (Let's talk about the burndown chart offline).
But for realz thanks for sharing Collin, these are the things that are easy to forget when you've been doing it for a while. Empathy for beginners evaporates when you don't remember how embarassed or lost you felt at the beginning. It's good to remember
Networking contains the umbrella of things I had to learn when I began.
Thanks for the reply Julia! So the people you met via networking helped you understand what you might need to learn? And what were some of those skills?
Oh! So networking as a discipline, OSI layers, how DNS works, AV setup for workshops, intricacies of HTTP methods, various cURL commands, data loss and reasons for it. I knew some from hacking and the protocols from that but was a script-kiddie when I began that. I did not know programming very well so I touched on it by programs but still years ago I did not know what all of it truly meant in the workings of it. I started understanding it when I was placed in situations which forced me to learn it. You know what I mean? So not social networking but actual network-networking. :)
🤦 Ahhh that kind of networking! Thank you for elaborating!!
My big gap was understanding that Software Engineering is a team sport.
I love this - I wanna tattoo it on my face
I think it's the TCP/IP, CORS, CI/CD, setting up the correct boilerplate with right tools, deployment on the VPS.... Should I know all this to be considered as hirable?!
I think if you're looking for a job as a web dev or anything outside of devops or networking, you should be fine. CORS seems to come up a lot for me personally, but I can't imagine a reasonable company making any of the things you mentioned a requirement for someone just entering the field.